


The Tights Crisis

by insensible



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur collecting important data, Arthur had the worst childhood, Distressed Designer Tights, Eames is a disaster, Eamsey get a clue, Knives, M/M, Mention of leeches I'm sorry, Not Suit Porn, Obliviousness, Pranks and Practical Jokes, The awkwardest unnegotiated unspoken idiotic powerplay, Tights, fond memories, gucci
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27389896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insensible/pseuds/insensible
Summary: "I almost felt sorry for you, at that point," Arthur said.Eames rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. "Hadn't thought it through, had I?""No.""Well. That's your department.""It is. Your face, Eames. You looked like you were about to drop dead.""It seemed a distinct possibility."
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 60





	The Tights Crisis

Arthur looks at him suspiciously. 

"Eames. Did you _steal_ this?"

"Might have done." 

"And it's for me?"

"It is. Saw it, thought of you." 

The box is a shallow, lidded cardboard square, white with a border like a funeral announcement and the word GUCCI printed in black across its centre. It's the kind of box Gucci uses for its selection of highly expensive neckties. Arthur holds it like it's about to explode. 

"Is there a reason for you giving me ... "

"... Do I need one? Or do you want one?"

Arthur's suspicion slides towards something more like perplexity. 

"If I said I did?"

"Professional admiration, Arthur." 

It's thin, of course it is. Arthur's not an idiot. But it _is_ a Gucci box, and Eames knows the fact that he stole it will make it easier for Arthur to accept it. Right now he's trying very hard not to smirk because this is going to be a _classic._

Arthur sighs. "Thank you, Eames," he says. "I need to get this—" he waves a hand at a sheaf of files on his desk—in order and then—"

"We can open it together. Perfect."

Eames spends the next forty minutes pretending to watch video footage of the woman he's been brought in to forge. She has no obvious mannerisms, is astonishingly nondescript, and Eames has been finding her a fascinating challenge. But he's finding it impossible to concentrate on her at present, because he's thinking about the pair of tights in the Gucci box. They're not just a pair of tights; they're a pair of artfully distressed Gucci tights, retailing for over two hundred dollars, riddled all over with holes and long laddered runs. They look like a five dollar pair at the end of a very good night, ready to be balled up and chucked away. They're absolutely hilarious. 

And Arthur deserves them. 

Arthur has been a thorn in Eames' side for years. Whenever he's discovered Arthur will be running point on an upcoming job he’s felt a wash of reassurance, knowing the whole thing is likely to run sweet as a die. But he’s also felt something like dread, because Arthur is a total pain in the arse. It's not just that he tends to professional tyranny. Eames respects that. It gets things done. 

It's more that Arthur maintains a personal animosity towards Eames that Eames has always ascribed to the fact that Eames' attitude to—well, _everything_ —offends him. Including his taste in shirts. And jackets. And trousers. And shoes. Over the last couple of years, Eames has taken to buying clothes for jobs with the express purpose of watching what little colour there is drain from Arthur's face when he walks into meetings. And last week, Arthur, looking even more stressed than usual in his pale grey three piece windowpane suit, had ordered him to change before he tailed the mark. "Eames," he'd said, wearily, "you look like something from a seventies porn movie. Lose the shirt, and the jacket. You're supposed to be _unobtrusive_."

Eames has always adored practical jokes. He considers them a legitimate art-form, one he’s worked hard to master over the years. They led to innumerable detentions at school, and a reputation in the forces that he strove hard to maintain. This is going to be one for the ages. He has just given Arthur a pair of distressed designer tights, and when Arthur opens the box he is going to be furious, scowl, say something deeply vicious, tip the tights into the trashcan by the desk and stalk off and thus Eames' honour will have been satisfied. 

He leans against the edge of the desk, hands clasped, his face lit with agreeable expectation as he watches Arthur open the box. He's looking at Arthur's fingers because a second ago he saw something that looked far too much like shy gratitude in Arthur’s face. That stung a little; he’s mentally urging Arthur to hurry up. The tissue paper is pulled back, almost reverently, and Arthur sees the packet of tights. 

He is gratifyingly nonplussed. 

"What is this, Eames?" he asks. 

"Tights, Arthur!"

"For me."

"Absolutely." 

Arthur opens the packet, stares at the holes in the nylon. Good sport, thinks Eames. 

"They're damaged."

"No, they come like that. They're _distressed_ , Arthur. Height of fashion. They're not just holes. They're _Very Well Made_ holes. Gucci holes."

Arthur nods, thoughtfully, as he turns the tights in his hand. And the longer he does so, the more Eames begins to feel something worryingly like nervousness. Eventually he glances doubtfully at Eames. And he must see something in Eames' face, then, that confirms the joke is on him, because his expression hardens. He presses his lips tight, looks resigned, as if this incident were further proof that life will never offer you gifts without them being poison. As if this has happened to him a thousand times before. 

Eames feels his insides lurch. He tries on a smile. It doesn't fit. Arthur does not suit this kind of playfulness, he realises. Arthur _doesn't know what it is for._ And for all Eames' jokes about his perpetual earnestness, it's not that Arthur doesn't possess a sense of humour. It exists. It tends either to caustic dryness, or something that in Eames' more generous moments he'd call engagingly artless, and in his less generous moments, simple to the point of childishness. But it's there, and Arthur is a grown-up, and Eames had every reason to assume he would take this on the chin, the way it was intended, and doubtless escalate it at a later date for payback. Eames thought this would be _fun._

It is not fun. 

Eames has unshakeable professional self-worth. He knows how good he is at his work. Frankly, he’s a fucking maestro. But in other ways—well. His whole demeanour has been shaped to hide deep and abiding insecurities. His hail-fellow-well-met languid public-school obviousness is a disguise so ancient and well-worn that most of the time he forgets he's wearing it. Until moments like these. 

He knows he’s hurt Arthur. He's hurt him with this stupid joke. He's made him feel foolish and uncomfortable, and the parts of Eames that always hurt, that always feel foolish and uncomfortable feel an unexpected burst of fellowship with Arthur, an awful intimacy so intense that Eames feels close to tears. He finds himself running through a series of increasingly desperate options for apologies that might somehow still allow him to save face, and they're occupying most of his thoughts when Arthur sighs, sets the box on the table, bends at the waist and and reaches for the floor, most of him obscured by the edge of the desk. Eames looks at the buckle of his waistcoat cinched across the pale silk of his lower back and wonders how much that outfit cost because it's something safe to think about. He hears Arthur unzipping his boots, followed by the double thump of them being kicked off and righted. Then there's an even more unexpected sound: peeling velcro, after which Arthur's hand reaches up to deposit a knife in an ankle holster on the tabletop. 

_Oh_ , thinks Eames. But of course Arthur would carry a blade at his ankle. So useful at close quarters, in small spaces, with no risk of running out of ammunition, and Arthur knows as well as he does that most assailants tend to make the mistake of assuming firearms are the only risk. Eames frowns. A little more of Arthur has been revealed, and it makes sense. Arthur's preferred sidearm is a perfect match for his personality: efficient, reliable, generic to the point of blandness. But, thinks Eames, looking at the knife: there it is. There's the other side of Arthur: not just cutting, but aggressively personal. He's aching to pick up the holster and draw out the knife. He jumps as the chair next to him is pushed back with a screech. 

*

A very long time later, on a hot night in a hotel room in Dakar, geckos chittering and chasing each other across the ceiling, Arthur had asked Eames if it was honestly the case that it was only when he began unbuckling his belt that Eames realised the tights were going to be worn. Eames countered with a firm and slightly testy assertion that if Arthur was going to pull knives out of nowhere and leave them right in front of his eyes it's no wonder he was distracted. 

And Arthur had looked smug.

"Fuck off, Arthur," said Eames, agreeably. "You hadn't a clue." And then, "Christ, though. I was such a dick." 

"Yeah", said Arthur. "You were." 

*

It's only when Arthur starts unbuckling his belt that Eames realises—fucking _hell_ —that the tights are going to be worn. And he knows why they are going to be worn, which makes this all awful. The reason is apparent in the set of Arthur's jaw, the tension in his shoulders, the way he won't meet Eames' eye. It's obvious Arthur has learned that the only way out of a situation like this is to see it through; it's a power move born of learned helplessness. Mutely he watches Arthur coil the belt and drop it next to the knife on the table, then unhook and unzip his fly, thumb his waistband down over his hips until his trousers puddle at his ankles, step out of them, pick them up, line up the creases, fold them once over his forearm, lay them next to the belt and knife. 

The socks are folded together at their tops and set on the seat of the chair and as Eames watches this careful disrobing he wonders if he'll ever be working with Arthur again. Not after this, probably. God help him if he ends up working against him. That happened once before, by accident rather than design, and he doesn't care to remember it, not least because it might have been the worst way he's ever died. 

Arthur picks up the tights while balancing on one foot, wrinkling up one leg between his thumbs to shorten it, and Eames notes the practised ease with which he opens the foot out with the back of his hands to pull it over his pointed toes. 

"Arthur," says Eames, his voice seductive, because cartoon flirting is safer than anything else right now. "You've done this before."

"Pantyhose?" Arthur says, matter of factly, drawing the nylon slowly up his right calf. "Yes."

Eames is running on automatic. He hates every word as soon as he hears it leave his mouth.

"Cross-dressing, darling. I approve."

Arthur turns his head, looks directly at him. He looks at him for a long time, long enough for Eames to become nervous. Arthur's poker face is, as usual, formidable, but Eames catches a suspicion of a frown on it before he narrows his eyes a fraction and smiles. 

"They're useful kit. Good for polishing guns, boots, hold a knot well and securely, and I wouldn't wade through a swamp without a pair."

"A swamp."

"Leeches," says Arthur, moving again, pulling the fabric up over one thigh, spreading his fingers to smooth it out, peering down to examine the laddering, the holes. "Can't get through the mesh." 

"Leeches," parrots Eames. 

He's watching Arthur put on a pair of skeezy designer tights and it's ... _fuck._

No. He's not watching. He's _staring._

"Problem, Eames?"

"No problem," 

"Good." Arthur steps gracefully into the other leg, and when that's done he rises onto his toes to pull the waistband up over his hips. Eames tries to keep his eyes fixed lower down as he does so, but this is not as calming as he'd hoped. He gets a little lost in the way the nylons flatten curls of dark hair against the pale skin of Arthur's calves, the way the fabric outlines the curve of his musculature, but softly, darkly, like a charcoal line brushed with a finger, and Eames _does_ have a problem, and it's getting worse by the second. He can't remember which circle of hell it is that liars get packed off to, but it's probably adjacent to the one where overly-lustful fuckers end up, so he'll be stuck there on the fence between the two, probably impaled on it, demonic hordes laughing at him for eternity. 

A fresh wave of panic hits. It's Eames' horrified realisation that what is making him sweat is not simply the abstract conjunction of a pair of lean, strong legs clad in twenty denier nylons, nor the half-glimpse he'd tried to avoid of a pair of shadowed hip bones before they disappeared back under the tails of a very lovely shirt. It's not even the objective filthiness of laddered nylons—which would be quite enough on their own, thank you very much—it's that it's A _rthur wearing them._

Fucking _Arthur_ . He's standing very upright with his left foot flat on the tabletop, knee bent to his chest like a femme fatale in a noir film, running his hands up that thigh— _he's just making sure there's no twist in the weave_ , thinks Eames desperately, _that's what he's doing, this isn't what it looks like_ —before reaching down for the holster by his foot. He only gets it half-wrapped around his ankle when his phone rings. He picks up. Eames is surprised. Arthur doesn't leave things half-finished _._ This must be a fucking important call. 

"Unacceptable," he snaps after a few seconds, face like a stone. "I expected the consignment on Tuesday. Where the fuck is it?" Eames wants to grin: any explanation about to be offered to Arthur is not going to be good enough. He wants to grin, but his mouth twitches in something that's more of a wince, because Arthur's tone of voice has gone straight to his already unruly groin. 

Arthur lowers his leg to the floor, shifts the pair of socks to the edge of the seat and sits. His frown has deepened. "You're joking. It's only two thousand rounds. You're not shipping me a fucking battleship." 

Arthur particularly enjoys being angry at people who are not yet in full possession of the knowledge of how right he is and how wrong they are. When he leans back in the chair and puts his stockinged feet on the desk, the tense physicality that had gripped him ever since he opened the box begins to ease. He slips into the demeanour of a man settling into a warm bath. He looks almost approachable. 

_Almost_. Eames knows Arthur's very definite views on personal space, and knows more generally what is, and what isn't acceptable when it comes to matters of personal defensive weaponry, bodies, and consent. But as he stares at the half-secured holster hanging from Arthur's ankle he feels the sickening rush of knowing he's going to do something very stupid. Well, it's not him, it's his dick. Which is not a reasonable justification, but it is what it is. 

Arthur doesn't stop talking when Eames reaches for the holster, but there's definitely a half-second gap in the middle of the word "consequences" that isn't usually there. Eames' preternatural ability to tell himself a story and instantly believe it to be the truth has already led him to conclude that fixing the holster isn't simply helpful, it's practically an apology. To get the right tension to wrap the velcro in place, he knows he'll need to hold Arthur's ankle. So he grips it, a little lightheaded with the solidity, the warm intimacy of the bones pressed beneath his palm, then takes hold of the free end of the tab, pulls on it, and is about to press it in place when he stares down at his own hands and has a moment. It's suddenly horribly obvious what this looks like. Actually, he thinks, with another little shock, what it _feels_ like. And that's when he realises Arthur must have ended his call, because the silence is deafening. 

*

"I almost felt sorry for you, at that point," Arthur said. 

Eames rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. "Hadn't thought it through, had I?" 

"No." 

"Well. That's your department." 

"It is. Your _face_ , Eames. You looked like you were about to drop dead." 

"It seemed a distinct possibility." 

*

"What are you doing, Eames?"

"I just ... "

"You won't be able to get the right tension on it like that. With the knife in it."

"The—"

"The knife. You'll need to take it out first." 

"You want me to—ok." 

Mutely, Eames pulls the knife free. It's a tiny Schrade: black thermoplastic handle, black double edged three and three quarter inch blade. 

"Handy," he says, frowning. “Cheap.”

"Did you expect something custom?" 

"Kind of. You know. Considering." 

"Considering what?" 

"Arthur," he says, almost in remonstration. "Come on. You're bespoke all over." 

"Am I. Well. I'm assuming that's a compliment." 

Arthur waits for Eames to respond to that, the bastard, and when he doesn't, seems to take pity on him. "I like how I can pick these up anywhere. This one was from a Kmart," he goes on. "I'm better with a longer blade, sure, but in terms of practicalities and outcomes, that doesn't matter, most of the time." 

"Most of the time, Arthur? Do I want to know?" 

Arthur looks at him curiously. 

"I think you probably do," he says, eventually, in a voice so much lower than his usual register that Eames feels on the brink of some kind of personal catastrophe, and at the same time is gripped with the conviction that this conversation is going to end in an extremely satisfactory way. 

It doesn't. Arthur frowns at his phone. 

"I have to go out," he says.

"Why?" says Eames. 

"I've a meeting." He crosses his left leg over his knee, fixes the holster, holds out his hand for the knife, slips it back into place. And then Eames, aghast, watches him rise and put his trousers on again, pulling them up right over the tights, and once the socks and boots have joined them, there is Arthur, brushing his lapels, looking exactly as he did half an hour ago, only not quite. There's an almost imperceptible quirk to his mouth that makes Eames want to either deliver a punch or a kiss or a bite to it. Probably, he thinks, a punch would be best. 

"You look pleased with yourself," he observes, a little testily. 

"Gathering novel data is always a pleasure, Eames." Arthur says. He picks his car keys and winter hat from the desk, hauls his coat and scarf from the back of the chair. "I'll be back by five. We need your forge watertight by Friday morning at the latest. You ok for a test level, seven-thirty? I need to run through some issues with the build, but you can come down, show me what you've got." 

"Seven thirty," says Eames. "Right-ho." 

"Good." 

He's almost at the door before he turns. 

"Thank you for the present, Eames. It was very unexpected," he says, softly, disappearing into the snowy blankness of a backstreet in Trois-Rivières. 


End file.
